Wherever we work, there are going to be occupational hazards that test our safety and security. It doesn’t matter if you’re working in a wastewater treatment plant or if you’re a home healthcare worker in a patient’s home – there will be safety hazards, big and small. But when you work alone, the risk of those safety hazards is elevated because there isn’t a coworker nearby to get or provide emergency aid if you get injured. “Lone working” can be defined as performing a task by yourself, without help readily available if you are in trouble.

As governments ease months-long restrictions allowing employees to return to their offices, the new reality is that these places won’t be the same as we left them. The new normal will entail increasingly structured workplaces that are more mindful of potential physical contamination. For the foreseeable future, there will be new routines and procedures that we will need to enforce and become accustomed to, seemingly normal ways of doing things that need to be shifted in order to protect team members from potential infection of the notorious virus.

So how do you address these new workplace hazards and different working environments for your team members?

Of all the hazards in your workplace, physical hazards might the least obvious. Despite their name, physical hazards aren’t always something that you can see or touch. In this installment of our “Workplace Hazards” series, we’ll take a look at how you can identify and prepare for physical hazards.

Anything that can cause harm to people, animals, or infectious plant materials can be considered a biological hazard. They exist in most workplaces that involve working around other people, unsanitary conditions, in labs, or in the environment.